Why Ukrainians treated differently from other refugees?

[Babymamamama]

Disclaimer I’m not a current affairs specialist and not trying to start a bun fight this is a genuine question.
Aibu to ask why it is Ukranian refugees have on appearance been treated so differently from other groups fleeing dreadful conflicts in their home country. I’m specifically thinking of Afghan and Syrian nationals as they are the two groups I’m most aware of.

Round my way people have been hosting Ukrainians, clubbing together as whole streets to contribute to flat deposits, gathering up household items to set up Ukrainians in their temporary homes, holding fundraising concerts. It’s all all admirable and I myself have also contributed where I could. But a lingering question remains -why for this group and not the others? Is this unconscious bias? Why the difference in approach and treatment? Not wanting to offend but something about this doesn’t sit well with me. Can anyone with more knowledge of world affairs enlighten me please?

*other new refugees homesless

But everyone knows they exist and everyone knows the numbers that are crossing the channel everyday. If the Muslim community wished to house refuges they could do so after all aren’t Muslims supposed to give 2.5% of their income to help the poor and needy? So hosing a refugee would be part of their charitable giving.

The staff at our local primary, where our Ukrainian guests’ dd goes, told me they are shocked how little help they have been given (ie none) compared with the support they got when some Syrian families arrived a few years ago.

Bit of a leap there. You dont even know if the poster is Scottish, quite possible they identify most strongly as English themselves and they do feel this way about their own country.

But with the Ukrainian refugees you could sign up and offer a room with government help.

Is there such a campaign with other refugees? If so where?

I bet some people didn't even think that was an option.

Their country has been invaded by an aggressor similar to hitler. We can all identify with them.

They are not economic migrants or fleeing shit countries, managed by shit regimes, and shit religious intolerances. We can't identify with them. Sympathise yes, but one small country can't take every single person in the world who has to endure poor living standards, which is mostly the case. Being bombed out of your home is a very different situation from living in a repressive and harsh regime like the Taliban. Most Afghans and other nationalities can just keep their head down and work with their country for the best life they can achieve (which may be very poor). You can't keep your head down with bullets flying around.

It's a different situation, and most Ukrainians want the Russians to leave and to rebuild and live in their own country.

Absolutely. Syrian and Afghan families are not white.

And mis information - including on here, which continues the rhetoric.

The Syrian children I admitted to my school weren’t economic migrants, they were in danger of their lives because of the political situation in Syria.
When they arrived I was given access the the Home Office records and intel so that I could support the families and children. One single parent female - her records were so shocking I couldn’t even read them to the end. I couldn’t have started to imagine what she had gone through. Horrific. Her parents, brother and husband shot in front of her, she was raped, her baby daughter raped. She was so desensitised that she would show us photos of her family - in tortured states and dead. This lady was destroyed but trying to find safety, alone for herself and young family.

Before that, I saw for myself, the racist society we live in. Working in a large Asian community, I was horrified at how British, white, people treat our ( in many cases) British born Asians. I could write a book of the lack of understanding and the ingrained racism that is shown. The assumptions that are made, the stereotypes applied. Awful. I’d not imagined, before I took this job, that that’s how ‘we’ treat people. Shocked, appalled and very sad.

It's because they aren't brown

I think it's guilt. We know we're standing by and letting something terrible happen. We don't have a choice because the alternative is global nuclear war. But it feels shit and like it creates an obligation.

And to add, the refugee scheme for Afghan and Syrian refugees is the same. They will return home to rebuild their own country, being allowed 5 years here on entry.

There's a lot of what aboutery on this this thread.
@Bunnyannesummers i don't know anyone who has been to Ukraine or Kiev and I've lived here all my life & I'm pushing 50.

The clear baddy in point d is Russia and Russia bombed Syria first and then Ukraine.

Point c - Ukrainians generally speak English - no they don't, a lot of the Ukranians my local council are supporting have very little or no English language skills at all. My son goes to a summer camp and the Ukranian kids there have an interpreter to help.

Because your comment about English people isn't racist is it 🙄 it also makes you look stupid and ignorant, so well done 👍🏻

White, Christian, European.

I was following an interesting discussion. Refugees from the middle east were very sympathetic for the special treatments of the Ukrainians since they understood it was close to home. Refugees from Kosovo and Albania were a lot less sympathetic cause they are Europeans too. Ukrainians have been moved up in the queue for a lot of things that other immigrants are are still waiting after years.

Just the English?

I'd also like to add that this is solar all of34 Europe. Not just England/Uk

They're a white, European, Christian nation with a culture similar to ours. We can understand them. We can put ourselves in their shoes. We hear of an attack on a Ukrainian father and we can imagine it was our own father. We see a mother fleeing with her children and it is easy to imagine it's us, fleeing with our children.

I'm an Anthropologist and, as much as we (rightfully) fight against it and try to train ourselves not to stereotype, discriminate, and to treat people equally, as a species humans are more inclined to be able to empathise with, and understand, a group of people who are very much like their own. Similar to how a terrorist attack in Pakistan will get very little attention in the UK, but one in France will leave people horrified. (Used these two examples because two attacks happened in these two places around the same time and the response was massively different. Horror and grief about the French attack with little to no mention of the Pakistan attack).

This isn't a new thing. The Ukrainian refugee situation is just another way that we are seeing this.

On top of this, the British media is very sympathetic to Ukraine and so we are influenced by this.

This

The way in which non white refugees are treated in the U.K. is shocking.

You only have to look at how families displaced by the Grenfell Tower fire were treated. Most of the survivors are non white and were treated very, badly and dumped in hostels and hotels for months at a time in dodgy areas.

In 2015, at the height of the Syrian refugee crisis, my then local authority decided to offer housing to four Syrian families. I won’t say exactly where, but it is a true blue safe Tory seat, affluent, rural , very white. Two of the houses were privately owned rentals, two were council owned. The local people on the housing list were a bit miffed, but they were not as important as the refugees.

The local parishes ( yes horrid bigoted Christians but never mind) organised volunteers to help with day to day admin, driving them around, understanding English money etc. The W.I did collections of good used furniture and also new household goods ( I contributed a set of pans).

But we were all just institutionally racist bigots, weren’t we? Pretending to be charitable and welcoming to mask our racism. Or perhaps we were just sorry for people who had been subjected to war and destruction, in spite of their being racially, culturally and religiously different from their hosts.

By the way, the district where I lived in Central France a couple of years later was building some new social housing . The local electorate made it very clear to the Mayor that if he made it available to house migrants/ refugees as the National government was suggesting, he would not be re-elected. The houses were used for local families. The three shared apartments were used for French apprentices who were working away from home under the compagnons system.

They are all so much more welcoming in Europe compared to the horrid racist Brits.

Genuine question: is there something about distance too? Would Middle Eastern refugees be taken in by countries closer to them than European ones, while Ukrainian refugees have been taken in by other European countries?

^This. Ukraine is in Europe, there is a quicker route to the uk.

This might be taken down: But I also think that may countries in the middle east don't take in refugees from their neighbours because of racism and being from different branches of Islam. If they do, they are put into camps away from the local population.

Because most of them don’t intend to stay.

That's one little town. So now you've concluded that racism, xenophobia, islamophobia doesn't exist towards refugees...?

@Allthegoodnamesarechosen

It's about colour.

I'm white, and when I go to the playground with toddler DD, everyone chats to me and is friendly. When non-white DH takes her and speaks to her in his language (he's a native English speaker as well) he gets completely ignored.

I've heard a couple of comments, in person, that Ukrainians are beautiful looking women and children, in comparison to other asylum seekers.
By beautiful, l interpreted that as blonde and blue eyed aka white.